You know it's almost New Years when...

You know it's almost New Years when every other commercial on TV is for a weight loss program. New Years resolutions are an astounding evidence of the human ability to resolve to do something and then completely forget about it in 30 days.

God is a very patient father, who doesn't seem to mind reminding His children about things that matter over and over again...like loving Him, loving others, sacrificing, giving, our insufficiency...stuff like that.

Butterfly Happy

We are wrapping up the Ecclessia series and we just tie up the creative side of it by posting some more of the creative elements used over the last couple weeks.

For week 4, we constructed a mobile of an alien butterfly galaxy- I mean, of the elements that make up Ecclessia:

The center unit is the church, and the outside forms represent Mission, Gospel, Leadership, Sacraments (baptism and communion), Preaching, and Relationship (including church discipline). These 6 elements are essential to the definition of the church; any element missing and one risks intergalactic imbalance of the universe, at least for the butterflies anyway...

The entire mobile was placed in the hands of Christ who presents the church as his bride for he is at the head. The hands were sculpted separately by Cassandra Star.

The final week of Ecclessia we used a video made by Gina Peraldo:

(to be posted soon)

One step closer...

Good news on the new Anchordown CD front...

Our engineer Ryan Booth and producer Robbie Seay are working on "pre-mixes"; getting the tracks ready to send off to the guy who is mixing our record.

I don't know how to spell his name, but he lives in Nashville and is from New Zealand so that information should excite you alone.

Breathe!

This week has been a whole new kind of insane...

A few of the things on the plate:

-shoot, edit, and export video for LS this weekend
-create template from scratch for new Theology Booklets
-paint and finish construct "Sand & Light" box for x-mas services
-finish artwork for new anchordown album
-upload percussion tracks for new album
-research ideas for new grace website
-design, order and place name placards throughout church

Oh, and do the things I normally do, like prepare the worship set for Sunday.

Not complaining, just putting it out there.
DZ

New Series; New Creative Theme

Our new series entitled "Ecclesia" explores how the church operates, how it is structured, what it functions as, and its relationship with heaven and earth. Because we are basically laying out the "blueprints" for the global and local church we decided that blueprints/schematics were a perfect creative motif to flow through the mediums, and design concepts for the next few weeks. Below are some of the examples of blueprint art from the creative team.

The words in the blueprints below were done with stencils and spray paint, and the butterflies drawn with colored pencils.

The following blueprints are by Layton Diament with pen and ink:

The Doctrine of Sex Series Continues....

These images were used this weekend in the DOCTRINE OF SEX SERIES to represent four different types of people dealing with sexual temptation.
Artwork by Seth Mach.


Surrendering life and struggles to Jesus


How far can I go without stepping off the edge?


Comfortably apathetic- Living life at a distance from the cross, although feeling sufficient to at least be keeping it within sight. These people often tell themselves "at least I am not doing such and such like so and so."


Pressing through the dark to following Jesus

"Married Sex is the Best Sex" sermon illustration

First of all, can I just say that it is crazy that I just typed the words "Married Sex is the Best Sex" into the title of the LS Worship journal. God is truly breaking down the barriers and negative connotations that the word "sex" has in church culture...

Anyway, for the week on married sex we went through the book of Song of Solomon. Often the language used in this book to describe beauty can actually be seen as funny or even gross. For Example, "your hair is like a flock of goats"- err yeah... awkward! So we decided to use beautiful pictures of the written imagery in order to show just why the lovers would have used these metaphors to describe their love and adoration of each other.

We hung the pictures across the width of the sanctuary on gazebo light rope. The purpose was to allow the congregation to see the beauty of the imagery during the sermon to enhance the text as it was being read to them.

In the south venue we placed serveral photos on the tables around the room at which people sit so that they could pick them to take a closer look if so desired.

Adobe After Effects

Living Stones is in dire need of finding someone with solid experience in the program After Effects.

Do you know someone who fits the bill? Let me know a.s.a.p.

Thanks stoners!
Dz

How Can This Be?

"So the problem is this..."

Reno does not have the thriving music industry and history that many other places have, such as Dallas, Houston, Nashville, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.

This has made it very difficult to find an affordable option to record the vocals here in Reno. Recording here would be ideal so that if I have an off day, the whole thing doesn't come crashing down. If I go back to TX, then I have roughly 36 hours to sing all 6 songs perfectly and get home. As it stands, it's cheaper to go to TX and record there then to do so here with no airfare (obviously).

Guys in town like Sierra Sonics and Tom Gordon kind of have the market cornered. So, the prices reflect that "monopoly". They are great studios but too expensive for me. Not too expensive for Eminem, Dr. Dre, and Collective Soul though, to name a few.

So, it's cheaper to fly half-way across the country to finish this record...that is a bit crazy I think.

Donald

Home Sweet Home

Just a quick note to say that I thoroughly enjoy being back home with the LS community. I believe that God was blessed by our time together as a community last night.

Amos

I was reading Amos today and saw this:

"The Lord GOD has spoken;
who can but prophesy?"

This really struck me. It's a reminder to me about God's sovereign hand in the world and in my life. You can't control the universe so it seems the wisest course of action is to tap into what God is doing and leave your plans behind.

Prayer changes...

It occurred to me this week that the things I pray for our community now are far different than the things I used to pray for us a few years back when we started.

I am not sure why this is so.

Strengths and weaknesses have changed, demands have changed, logistics have changed, and maturity levels have changed.

So have my prayers.

One Prayer T-shirts

This last series was packed full of creative expression!














On the second week of the four-week series, we built a canvas made of 50 T-shirt 1x1 squares and on it painted the OnePrayer logo during the service. It was a lot of work, but ooooohhh so fun!



First, we cut out three sets of stencils on to black paper. We had a stencil of the church, the girl, the hands, the world (two separate stencils), the "N" and "E", and the "PRAYER."





Then, we built the canvas backdrop upon which the t-shirts would rest by arranging several plywood planks into a formation that fit 5x10 square feet. The t-shirts need only to stack on top of each other at a slight slant to remain in formation for the canvas.

The t-shirts themselves were wrapped in 1x1 squares of plywood. Each t-shirt was wrapped individually with a different section exposed to the outside, in order that some of the final products would have the dye on the back, front, shoulder, or side of the shirt when it was unwrapped.






During the service, the worship team played the song "Never Contained" by Anchordown -- as it corresponded with the message -- and a team of four artists began to paint the canvas. It took about five minutes to complete using 2 types of spray bottles and 3 colors of t-shirt dye.














After we finished removing the finished t-shirts from the canvas, we still had about 2 shirts left over so we decided to experiment and make up our own picture -- "no shirt should be left out!"















In the week to come, we took all the plywood out of the shirts and began to do -- what we thought to be -- small touch ups and the addition of the LS logo to each shirt. Let's just say that we got a little carried away and ended up adding new stencils to the parts of the shirts that didn't have the squares and adding detail to the parts that did. We created several different LS logos and distributed them to all sizes and in all different places, making each shirt completely different from any other.







The following two weeks, the shirts were sold in order to benefit the NOW project (the building project at GraceLS) at a $10 min. donation. We did well and sold almost half the first week! Thanks to everyone for your support!

Connection

Tonight, yet another reason occurred to me of why a worship leader's role is very difficult.

My thought is that you are assigned the task of connecting with God and with man. More on this soon...
DZ

New Teaching Schedule

We're finally done walking through the book of Luke! 14 months later...Here's the new teaching schedule for all you LS artists looking to get in on the action:
teaching schedule

Easter is coming...

We've got some good stuff lined up and being created now for the Easter services...Remember to bring your friends and family this weekend!
DZ

Reggae

Two nights ago I was attending my dear friend Tim's birthday party. Tim is the guitarist for Anchordown. I met a woman attending the party, who told me over chips and dip that reggae music makes her "happy". As she said the word "happy", she put her hand out. Laying it flat she swept it across the space between us as if she was petting the back of an imaginary dog.

Last night, Anchordown led worship with my favorite gathering, Living Stones. After the 5pm service, a man approached me and said;

"I finally bought an Anchordown CD, and it's been in my truck for the last 2 weeks. I know you probably wonder whether what you do has any effect, but I wanted to tell you that every time I listen to your album, God brings me back down, back to where I need to be."

As he said that last phrase, he put his hand out. Laying it flat he swept it across the space between us, as if petting an imaginary dog.

His kind remarks were deeply affirming, and yes I do wonder those things. I didn't realize it at the time, but his words would stay with me the rest of the evening. It's a statement that sounds weird, and the two options are certainly not mutually exclusive, but I think I would rather have God bring me to where I need to be, than be "happy".

The deepest happiness (or joy as I prefer to use) is found in and through Him (Romans 5:1-3). Reggae or rock, merely 2 options out of millions including polka, mowing the lawn, and feeding the hungry, can only be means by which God authors that connection with Him, thus causing joy. I guess that makes sense, because human happiness, blades of grass, as well as music, were His original ideas.

DZ

Traitor Joe

Art made by Christians (music, print, digital etc...) reminds me of Trader Joes. Let me explain.

Trader Joe's essentially sells products that are healthier versions of things we all know and love. This morning I had "Trader O's", a somehow more natural version of Cheerios. They don't taste that great. It's not that they're bad, they just aren't as good as the original.

I think art in Christian circles is a lot like that. It's supposed to be better for you, but often, it doesn't taste, look or sound as good.

I know about a dozen causal reasons, but the observation still stands.

DZ

Emotion and Truth

Music and emotions are strongly tied together. No one questions that, but why is that true? Why has God linked auditory sensory with our emotive response? Emotion rooted in truth can be life-changing. Memories are heightened, decisions are sured. And yet, the danger is always lurking that the object of our worship will lose out to the means. To put it another way; worshipping worship itself.

An example: God can feel far away. This is spiritually and physically impossible as He is omnipresent. And so the clashing of truth and feeling. BUT, there may be some truth in the fact that we are not living in the Spirit and so have squelched His desire to move in our lives.

More on this later...

DZ